“Fraenkel Gallery is pleased to announce our first solo exhibition of the work of Alec Soth. On view from February 5 – April 4, 2015, Alec Soth: Songbook will feature approximately 20 new and never-before-seen photographs.

Celebrated for his haunting and influential portraits and landscapes in such acclaimed books as Sleeping by the Mississippi,Broken Manual, and NIAGARA, Alec Soth has recently turned his lens toward community life in the country. From 2012 to 2014 Soth traveled the United States looking for signs of social life in our era of virtual social networks. To aid in his search, Soth assumed the increasingly obsolescent role of community newspaper reporter. From upstate New York to Silicon Valley, he attended hundreds of meetings, dances, festivals and family gatherings.

With Songbook, Soth has stripped these pictures of their news context in order to highlight the longing for connection at their root. Fragmentary, funny, and sad, Songbook is a lyrical depiction of the tension between American individualism and the ongoing desire to be united.”

The exhibition will be on view February 5 – April 4, 2015.
The accompanying publication, Songbook, was published by MACK, January 2015.

“Photographer Rosalind Solomon presents a dramatic interpretation of the work in her her latest book, THEM (Mack, 2014), accompanied by cellist Sam Im, and discusses her new work, which documents life in Israel and the West Bank in 2010 – 2011, with curator and writer Charlotte Cotton. Followed by a book signing and presented by BFA Photography.”

“Photographer Christopher Payne specializes in the documentation of America’s vanishing architecture and industrial landscape. His recently published book, North Brother Island: The Last Unknown Place in New York City, explores an uninhabited island of ruins in the East River. Mr. Payne’s photographs invoke the former grandeur of the site over dierent seasons, capturing hints of buried streets and infrastructure now reclaimed by nature, while also offering a unique glimpse into a city’s future without people.”

Free and open to the public. To register, please contact the General Society at: 212.840.1840, ext 2 or e-mail: karin.taylor@generalsociety.org

The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen of the City of New York
20 W 44th St
New York, NY 10036 [map]

“In 2005, I set out to photograph my home state of South Dakota, a sparsely populated frontier state on the Great Plains with more buffalo, pronghorn, coyotes, mule deer, ring-necked pheasants, and prairie dogs than people. It’s a landscape dominated by space and silence and solitude, by brutal wind and extreme weather. I was trying to capture a more intimate and personal view of the West. I was trying to capture what all that space feels like to someone who grew up there. A year into the project, however, everything changed. One of my brothers died unexpectedly. For months, one of the few things that eased my unsettled heart was the landscape of South Dakota. It seemed all I could do was drive through the badlands and prairies and photograph. I began to wonder: Does loss have its own geography?” – Rebecca Norris Webb

“Printed Matter presents the eighth annual NY Art Book Fair, from September 20 to 22, at MoMA PS1, Long Island City, Queens.

Free and open to the public, the NY Art Book Fair is the world’s premier event for artists’ books, catalogs, monographs, periodicals, and zines. Last year, the fair featured 283 booksellers, antiquarians, artists, and independent publishers from twenty-six countries, and was attended by more than 25,000 people.

Join us for our opening night preview featuring a live set from MASKS on the steps of MoMA PS1. Comprised of New York City-based duo Alexis Georgopoulos and Max Ravitz, the group incorporates elements of underground dance music through analog synthesizers and drum machines. Supporting MASKS, one of the most enigmatic artists on the L.I.E.S. roster, Terekke (aka Matt Gardner) makes subliminal, dub–influenced, tape hiss–fueled basement house.”

“Free and open to the public, the NY Art Book Fair is the world’s premier event for artists’ books, catalogs, monographs, periodicals, and zines. Last year, the fair featured 283 booksellers, antiquarians, artists, and independent publishers from twenty-six countries, and was attended by more than 25,000 people.”

“The first book on the work of Sharon Harper, From Above and Below, features ten years of experimental photographs and video stills of the sky—images of stars, sun, sky, moon and clouds. Sharon’s photographs within this volume draw on scientific and artistic uses of photography to illuminate the medium’s ability to simultaneously verify empirical evidence and record the artist’s subjective relationship to the natural world.”

“Los Jardines de México presents three related bodies of work, La Fosa Común, Akna and El Jardín de Juegos by Janelle Lynch. Images of overlooked or obscure urban and rural landscapes, they explore aspects of the life cycle—loss, death, regeneration—while simultaneously celebrating life and its intricate beauty.”